Familial Nonmedullary Thyroid Cancer: An Emerging Entity That Warrants Aggressive Treatment

We read with interest the report by Grossman et al1in the August 1995 issue of theArchivesabout the clinical aggressiveness of familial nonmedullary thyroid carcinoma. We agree with the conclusion of that article. Although Ozaki et al2published an article entitled "Familial Occurrence of Differentiated, Nonmedullary Thyroid Carcinoma" in 1988, we recently carried out the subsequent retrospective review, using their data, to determine the clinical and pathological features of this disease. Fifty-two patients were treated for familial nonmedullary thyroid carcinoma at Ito Hospital and Teikyo University Hospital, Tokyo, Japan. Thirty-four families were identified, with 72 affected individuals. Seventeen patients were men and 55 were women. Pathological diagnosis revealed papillary carcinoma in 64 patients, follicular carcinoma in six patients, and anaplastic carcinoma in two patients. These two anaplastic carcinomas were considered to be transformed from preexisting differentiated carcinoma. Because we routinely carried out modified neck dissection, we